Toward the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century, greater numbers of magazines were published throughout the world. The enlarged demand for photographic illustration, along with the appearance of lighter, easier-to-use camera equipment, led to an increase in images of war for reproduction. The Spanish-American War was documented by Jimmy Hare, the South African War by Horace W. Nicholls, the Russo-Japanese War by Luigi Barzini, and the Mexican Revolution by Augustin Victor Casasola. Although strict censorship prevailed with regard to the photographic record of World War I, the prominence of picture magazines from the 1920s through the 1950s ensured the continuance of war reportage.

A new approach to photojournalism began to emerge with the appearance of the Ermanox in 1924 and the Leica in 1925. These two German-made miniature cameras, fitted with wide-aperture lenses, required extremely short exposure times for outdoor work and were even able to photograph indoor scenes with available light. The Leica had the added advantage of using 35-mm roll film that could be advanced quickly, allowing a succession of exposures to be made of the same subject. This capability led to photographs whose informality of pose and sense of presence were remarkable.

Owing to these developments, the photojournalist was able to perceive a significant moment in a fraction of a second and to use the camera with such speed and precision that the instantaneous perception would be preserved forever. This is evident in the work of the Hungarian André Kertész in Paris during the 1920s. The Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson began about 1930 to develop the style that he later called the search for the “decisive moment.” To him the camera was an “extension of the eye.” Preferring the miniature 35-mm-film camera, he worked unobtrusively, making numerous exposures that usually included one in which all the elements come together to form a compelling psychological and visual statement.

In 1928–29 two of the largest picture magazines in Europe, the Münchner Illustrierte Presse and the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, began to print the new style of photographs. Erich Salomon captured revealing candid portraits of politicians and other personalities by sneaking his camera into places and meetings officially closed to photographers. Felix H. Man, encouraged by Stefan Lorant, editor of the Münchner Illustrierte, made sequences of photographs at interviews and cultural and social events, which Lorant then laid out in imaginative picture essays.

The example of the German picture magazines was followed in other parts of Europe and in the United States. One was the short-lived Vu, established in Paris in 1928. An issue of Vu devoted entirely to the Spanish Civil War contained memorable photographs by Robert Capa. In 1936 both Life and Look were conceived in the United States, and a formula evolved in which the picture editor, photographer, researcher, and writer constituted a team.

Among Life’s first photographers were Bourke-White, already famous for her industrial photographs made largely for the magazine Fortune; Alfred Eisenstaedt, an experienced photo reporter for the Keystone Picture Agency in Germany; Hansel Mieth, also from Germany, who at times worked with her husband, Otto Hagel; and Peter Stackpole, whose photographs of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco attracted much attention. The concept of Life from the start, according to its founder, Henry Luce, was to replace haphazard picture taking and editing with the “mind-guided camera.” Photographers were briefed for their assignments and encouraged to take great quantities of photographs so that the editors might have a large selection. (The fact that selection and sequencing were a function of the editors led to objections on the part of some photographers, notably W. Eugene Smith, who left the employ of Life at one point in order to gain greater control over his own work.) The visual organization of the picture story was carefully planned for maximum reader impact. The opening photograph of the photo-essay established the situation, and as with written narration there was a visual climax and a definite conclusion.

Initially Life and Look preferred to use pictures of great sharpness and depth. Thus, instead of unobtrusive miniature cameras, American photographers used large-format cameras requiring slow lenses, large plates, and additional flash light. This way of photographing was challenged by Lorant, who had left the Münchner Illustrierte Presse after being forced to leave Germany in 1934. He eventually settled in London, where he established the magazines Weekly Illustrated (1934) and Picture Post (1938). Staff photographers on both magazines included old colleagues also forced from Germany, such as Man and Kurt Hutton. They and other contributors were encouraged to develop the technique and pictorial style of taking photographs by using available light—i.e., not using a flash. Their pictures had a remarkable naturalness that brought great reader appeal—so much so that Life began to publish similar photographs and in 1945 hired a former Picture Post photographer, Leonard McCombe, with an extraordinary clause in his contract: he was forbidden to use a flash.

The photojournalistic style popularized by Life and Look influenced other activity in the field, in particular the exhibition “Family of Man,” which was mounted by Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1955. This highly popular exhibition presented over 500 photographs—mostly photojournalistic and documentary work—alongside texts of different sizes and formats, somewhat in the manner of a three-dimensional magazine.

Memorable groups of photographs were taken for the major picture magazines. Examples are Man’s A Day with Mussolini, first published in the Münchner Illustrierte Presse (1931) and then, with a brilliant new layout, in Picture Post; Smith’s Spanish Village (1951) and Nurse Midwife (1951) in Life; and Eisenstaedt’s informal, penetrating portraits of famous Britons, also in Life. Images by Eisenstaedt of the Italian incursion into Ethiopia and by David Seymour (“Chim”) and Capa of the Spanish Civil War made visible events leading up to World War II. This conflict was thoroughly documented for the Western allies by military personnel as well as by Capa, Bourke-White, Dmitry Baltermants, Yevgeny Khaldey, and Constance Stuart Larrabee on the North African, eastern European, and western European fronts and by Smith in the South Pacific. Heinrich Hoffman portrayed the war at home and at the front for Germany, and Yosuke Yamahata documented the role of the Japanese army in the South Pacific.

Colour photography

The Autochrome process, introduced in France in 1907 by Auguste and Louis Lumière, was the first practical colour photography process. It used a colour screen (a glass plate covered with grains of starch dyed to act as primary-colour filters and black dust that blocked all unfiltered light) coated with a thin film of panchromatic (i.e., sensitive to all colours) emulsion, and it resulted in a positive colour transparency. Because Autochrome was a colour transparency and could be viewed only by reflected light, however, researchers continued to look for improvements and alternative colour processes.

In 1935 Leopold Godowsky, Jr., and Leopold Mannes, two American musicians working with the Kodak Research Laboratories, initiated the modern era of colour photography with their invention of Kodachrome film. With this reversal (slide) film, colour transparencies could be obtained that were suitable both for projection and for reproduction. A year later the Agfa Company of Germany developed the Agfacolor negative-positive process, but owing to World War II the film did not become available until 1949. Meanwhile, in 1942 Kodak introduced the Kodacolor negative-positive film that 20 years later—after many improvements in quality and speed and a great reduction in price—would become the most popular film used for amateur photography.